I wrote Daniel Bradley not too long after the discovery of L21 and told him about it. He actually responded and seemed interested but said they were no longer working on genetics at Trinity College. He asked about L21 in France, but at that point we had only a handful of French L21 (eight, I think).

You have done your best. So have I. Prof. Cunliffe saw an early version of my P of E a year ago.

But the field is changing faster than the normal academic process can keep up with. The ideas of 2008 are now coming out in 2010, and there is not a lot that anyone can do about that. Authors may try to modify their text before print, to take new discoveries into account, but there comes a point when the editors simply can't allow any more fiddling about.

That list includes a lot of card carrying citizens of Atlantis who have sort of dug themselves deeply to the point of no return into the Atlantic Celts and/or out of Iberia model (of various dates) long ago. Certainly Koch, Cunliffe, Oppenheimer and the irish geneticists have backed themselves into a bit of a corner in print and even on a TV series. They are the usual suspects when it comes to the Atlantic Celts/out of Iberia model and it does not surprise me that they are looking to beef up their Atlantic angle.

However, if, as you strongly argue, the spread of languages must be linked to a population change, the R1b1b2 clade evidence is decisively against this model and rather links the isles Atlantic Celts to northern France/SW Germany i.e. something more akin to the traditional model of a central European (then Gaulish) origin of the Celts (be it an Iron Age, Bronze Age or Neolithic one) with a spread through France to the British Isles.

An Atlantic model can only survive L21 if it is signficantly altered to make NW France the immediate source of contact with the British Isles.

Alan - The idea that Bell Beaker was spread by "a few copper/bronze smithing/trading families" was dreamed up by Richard Harrison in the heat of the anti-migrationist movement. Before "the new archaeology" no-one doubted that BB represented mass migration by Beaker Folk. There was ample evidence of same, but it was all argued away by those for whom "continuity" was a buzz word.

The tide turned a few years ago. Volker Heyd refused to deny the evidence right in front of his eyes. It stood out a mile that in the area he was excavating, BB represented an intrusion by new people. Suddenly you get people with different skeletons, different lifestyle and burial customs settling on different sites from the previous lot. No this can't be explained by the descendants of the previous lot adopting new fashions.

The absurd refusal to recognise migration in the record has had its day. The rise of population genetics will seal its demise. But some archaeologists rebelled against the dogma before genetics forced them to kiss it goodbye. There is a paradigm change going on in archaeology. The proof of that is not just Prof. Cunliffe setting sail up the Atlantic seaboard. It lies in the proliferation of academic projects investigating aspects of migration. There is ferment going on behind the scenes.

Jean to be honest I have always thought that the beaker period saw a substantial input into southern and eastern Britain although similar evidence is lacking in the Atlantic areas of the British Isles. In ireland on the one hand there was an early metalworking powerhouse but NO typical beaker burials. Some attribute this lack of classic beaker burial, the contrasting wealth of evidence of early metallurgy and the continuing use of megaliths (even a new type of megalith-Wedge Tombs with some resemblance to Breton ones) to an early Atlantic beaker connection. However, it is worth noting that most of the pottery is of the British and Rhenish type. Ireland does have a strong similarity to Britain in terms of the immediate post-beaker successor cultures. Indeed many beaker traditions like inhumations in cists with a pot, beaker type archery equipment etc do not appear in a coherent package form in Ireland until the immediate post-beaker period. Indeed, in past reading, I recall Wales and western Scotland as having a similar atypical beaker period as Ireland.

I am not sure how the much greater strength of evidence of a beaker migration in the east can be squared with the very high L21 in the west/Atlantic parts of the British Isles. A Breton link would make some sense to me as that is where stubborn local Atlantic megalithic traditions, NW European beakers and Iberian influences overlapped and of course it is a very high L21 area today. Alternatively L21 may have arrived in the beaker period mainly in eastern Britain from NW Europe before spreading west in both beaker and post-beaker times with much later migration later diluting L21 in the east giving it a 'false' Atlantic look.

I'm not worried about relative densities of Beaker sites in Britain. Although the initial attraction may have been to sources of metal in the mountains, the lowlands support a higher density of population. So whatever the period, from pre-history to today, we are liable to find higher populations in the lowlands.

So far we have clues that the Amesbury Archer came from near the Alps, but was connected to a trade network as far as Iberia. We have early Beaker pots in Argyll bearing a close resemblance to those in the Netherlands. Here's how I sum up:

Quote

The Bell Beaker Culture bought the Bronze Age to the British Isles. To be more exact, Beaker folk initially brought the Copper Age around 2,450 BC, homing in on the copper belts of Ireland and Wales. They left their characteristic beakers at a copper-working site on Ross Island, in Lough Leane, County Kerry. To judge by chemical compostion, copper from Ireland was traded into Britain, along with gold from the Mourne Mountains. The incomers boosted what had been a dwindling population of farmers, and created a thriving society. From around 2,200 BC Beaker interest in Britain intensified as Cornwall was discovered to be a prime source for tin, the precious component of true bronze.

For decades a vision of prehistoric population continuity shaped a view of Bell Beaker in British Isles as a purely cultural phenomenon. The discovery of the Amesbury Archer near Stonehenge in 2002 forced a reconsideration. This man lived around 2,300 BC and was buried with Beaker pots and wrist guards. Tests were carried out on the Archer’s teeth and bones and objects found in the grave. They show that he came from Central Europe, perhaps near the Alps, and that his copper knives came from Spain and France. The Beaker isotope project is taking a fresh look at the Beaker Culture in Britain.

For more than two centuries, scientists have tried to decipher Southwest Script, believed to be the peninsula's oldest written tongue and, along with Etruscan from modern-day Italy, one of Europe's first. The stone tablet features 86 characters and provides the longest-running text of the Iron Age language ever found.

About 90 slate tablets bearing the ancient inscriptions have been recovered, most of them incomplete. Almost all were scattered across southern Portugal, though a handful turned up in the neighboring Spanish region of Andalucia. ....

It is generally agreed the texts date from between 2,500 and 2,800 years ago. Most experts have concluded they were authored by a people called Tartessians, a tribe of Mediterranean traders who mined for metal in these parts — one of Europe's largest copper mines is nearby — but disappeared after a few centuries. Some scientists have proposed that the composers were other pre-Roman tribes, such as the Conii or Cynetes, or maybe even Celts who roamed this far south.

The explication of Celt and Umbrian p- from kw- as due to Etruskan influence isn't convincing. This is a linguistic change diffused all over the world and happened many times also from Latin to Neolatin languages (Rum. limba from Latin "lingua" presupposes the parallel b from gw-, the same in Sardinian "limba". Rum. apa from "aqua", Sardinian "abba" etc.) The problem could be put in a different way as an influence of substratum if we presuppose that there was a Rhaetic-Etruskan substratum in Europe and that Rhaetic-Etruskan was a relict of an ancient phase of the Indoeuropean, those R1b1* which from the Rhaetian-Etruskan fatherland peopled all Europe and Mediterranean shores after the Younger Dryas, like I think is going to be demonstrated at genetic level. See the last postings on www.worldfamilies.net by me and Argiedude.If really Etruskan "puplu" presupposes the IE *kwekwlo- the link from Rhaetian-Etruskans and Indo-Europeans should be dated to many thousands of years ago and not in historic times.

Well Koch doesn't agree with that latter idea, as you see. And I have to agree with him that it scarcely explains why the king himself had a Celtic name, or the Celtic tribal name. Though it does seems that there are relatively few Celtic place-names in the area.

Koch acknowledges his debts, but adds more:

There are several issues here1) Koch adds some anthoponims, no new readings, on this he is dependant on Correa and Untermann. The problem is that they were only able to reas some short inscriptions, the longer Tartessian inscriptions remain undeciphered since then, and it is already about 15 years. If Tartessian was a Celtic language, inscriptions could have been read, see for instance how every year new Celtiberian inscriptions are found and deciphered.2) We know there were Celtic populations in SW Iberia, that is nothing new, when I studied in the University a long way ago it was already known, not only Ancient sources indicate their presence (together with Germanic tribes) but also archaeological findings support that, with Hallstattic influence together with the more popular from the Atlantic Bronze.The traditional explanation, put forward by Blázquez, is that some Celtic mercenaries were hired by the Tartessians, and eventually they took control of the government, that would explain the Hallstattic influences in the aristocratic graves.To sum up, there are Celtic anthoponims in the inscriptions, that put Celtic peoples in the VII century BC in SW Iberai, that is still within the context of the traditional explanation of Celtic migration into Iberia in the Hallstatt period.IMO only when some long inscriptions are deciphered we can be certain of knowing which kind of language was Tartessian

Could Tartessian be a Creole language,a mixture of Celtic and a local non IE language?

IN dienekes blog he quotes some new study on the caucuses. It wasnt focussed on R1b but it was focussed on the correlation of languages and DNA. Not sure if it says much about R1b but the impression given is that its rare. I have always felt that area is probably the margins of language groups and a refuge area for peoples and languages driven from better land to the south and east. The paper indicates a major eastern barrier for European DNA at the Don River with the Caucuses beyond that barrier and very much Asian. I am interested in the idea of Euphratic, which has been suggested as a pre-Sumerian Indo-European language of the fertile crescent area. I know very little about it but it obviously has the advantage of making a link between IE and the area of origin of farming.

I have begun a thread here about "Euphratic". You can see. About the study you were spoken about, unfortunately it isn't fo free and I know only what has been said on other forums, but it seems that R1b is rare in the Caucasus, except amongst Armenians, like I have always said, and Armenians are Indo-Europeans come from the Balkans, and all those R1b cited also by Vizachero in "ht35 project" are above all Armenians, even pretty all the Turkish ones.

Could Tartessian be a Creole language,a mixture of Celtic and a local non IE language?

Tartessian texts show some anthroponims that are Celtic beyond doubt, so what we know is that Celtic people is in the Tartessian world at that stage. The traditional explanation is that a warrior Celtic elite took over Tartessians.

Could Tartessian be a Creole language,a mixture of Celtic and a local non IE language?

Tartessian texts show some anthroponims that are Celtic beyond doubt, so what we know is that Celtic people is in the Tartessian world at that stage. The traditional explanation is that a warrior Celtic elite took over Tartessians.

This is the full text of the paper of Balanovsky and al. "Parallel Evolution of Genes and Languages in the Caucasus": http://secher.bernard.free.fr/DNA/CaucasusRegion_Balanovsky_2011.pdfThere is a very interesting discussion about dating genetic lineages. The authors compare the Zhivotovsky evolutionary mutation rate (6.9 x 10-4 per locus per generation) with a genealogical rate (2.1 x 10-3; Gusmao et al., 2005; Sanchez-Diz et al., 2008; Ge et al., 2009). The results obtained by using these two rates were compared with linguistic and historical evidence.The ro estimator using the genealogical rate provided a good fit between genetics and linguistics, while estimates based on the “evolutionary” mutation rate were too old to be in agreement with the linguistic dates.For the BATWING tree, applying the genealogical rate underestimates the dates, while applying evolutionary rates overestimates the dates.

Many thanks for the paper. I have quoted some passages which demonstrate clearly that:

1) R1b1b2 isn’t from Middle East nor from East Europe (Kurgans, Maykop etc.), but from Western Europe (Italy I think)2) The authors use the genealogical mutation rate with many hairsplittings. Nobody denies that it may be worth in the short time, but it isn’t worth in the long one.

Similarly, two different haplotype clusters within R1b1b2-M269 (Supplementary Figure 1) were found in the Lezghins (30%) and in Ossets-Digor (16%). These concentrations of (presumably European) haplogroups R1a*-M198(xM458), R1a1a7-M458 and R1b1b2-M269 found in few locations in the Caucasus might indicate independent migrations from Europe that were too small to make any significant impact on Caucasus populations (page 16).

The Indo-European-speaking Ossets were outliers in the Caucasus linguistic tree, and the genetic tree also placed them separately, with slight similarity to the Abkhaz. Generally, the tree based on genetic distances mirrored the linguistic tree in its overall pattern and in most details (page 17).

The age for the four major haplogroups in individual populations obtained by using SD estimator (Supplementary Table 3) are close to the Neolithic epoch, and might be interpreted as signs of population expansion due to the shift to a farming economy(page 20).

Although occupying a boundary position between Europe and the Near East, all fourmajor Caucasus haplogroups show signs of a Near Eastern rather than European origin (Figure 2, Supplementary Figure 1). These four haplogroups reach their maximum (worldwide) frequencies in the Caucasus (Table 2, Figure 2). They are either shared with Near East populations (G2a3b1-P303 and J2a4b*-M67(xM92)) or have ancestral lineages present there (G2a1*-P16(xP18) and J1*-M267(xP58)). Typical European haplogroups are very rare (I2a- P37.2) or limited to specific populations (R1a1a-M198; R1b1b2-M269) in the Caucasus (page 22).

It should be mentioned here that, for the BATWING tree (which does not requireidentifying the clusters), applying the genealogical rate underestimates the dates, while applying evolutionary rates overestimates the dates (page 23).